Belle and Crazy Old Maurice

When I first started doing Halloween with Evelyn, I envisioned many years of clever, funny costumes held together by shoestring and tenacity. This year, however, Evelyn staged a coup and overthrew me as ultimate decision maker. Apparently, over the last year she has developed opinions and very strong ones at that. So she informed me in no uncertain terms that this Halloween she was to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Belle with the yellow dress. Mind you, Evelyn has never seen this movie, so where she got this brain wave is beyond me.

Dan had to convince me that we should probably let Evelyn make her own decision on this non-moral issue so I gave in. In spite of the fact that I was to be the shoestring and tenacity provider.

Anyway.

I started with an old pair of pants, courtesy of Goodwill, and a modish yellow dress, courtesy of my maternal grandmother. (I only sacrificed this dress because it was not salvageable for adult consumption. Otherwise, I would have worn it about the house for no good reason. Except that it was awesome. The picture does not do it justice.)

So I took in the pants about 5 sizes and converted them into shorts. With the remaining material, I made a vest and Josephine's costume was about done.

Then I just added some tucks in several places and VOILA! A Belle dress. Not hard, but time consuming as can be. I stayed up Friday night finishing it only to find that I had done too good a job and it was now about 3 inches too short. So I took out about 10 tucks and did them over. But luckily, it turned out great and Evelyn was so happy. It might as well have been straight out of the movie for as much as she loved it.

I didn't reckon on Josephine having any opinions but apparently she is chock full of them too. She did not appreciate her vest at all (she kept ripping it off) and she was a little floored by the mustache. But all in all, it was a pretty awesome Halloween. I hope everyone else's was too!